A Long Road to Justice: Colonel in Jesuit Massacre Faces Extradition

Hundreds from around the world attended a memorial mass to honor six Jesuit priests and two women, murdered in 1989 in El Salvador. The event was attended by U.S. diplomat, Daniel Thompson, (r) and the Spanish Ambassador to El Salvador, Federico de Torres Muro.

Just one day before the twenty-eighth anniversary of the infamous massacre of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador, the United States Supreme Court has cleared the way for holding one perpetrator accountable. The decision, announced Wednesday, November 15, allows for the extradition of former Salvadoran Colonel Inocente Orlando Montano Morales, from a prison in the United States to face justice in Spain for his alleged role in the massacre.

Officials in the Trump Administration say extradition could happen within the year.

“I think that there is hope that finally there will be justice,” Matilde Velasco told The Progressive Thursday after a memorial event in San Salvador held at the site of the massacre. She has attended the event annually, to preserve memory and call for justice. “We all know who the intellectual authors were. They weren’t brought to justice in this country, so hopefully in Spain they are brought to justice.”

In El Salvador, hundreds of people from around the world gathered for a memorial mass at the Universidad Centroamericana José Simeon Cañas (UCA) Thursday evening on the anniversary of the killings, in remembrance of the Jesuit priests and the other victims.

“Twenty eight years ago, six good men plus two women were assassinated by Battalion Atlacatl, which was trained by the United States of America.”

“Twenty eight years ago, six good men plus two women were assassinated by Battalion Atlacatl, which was trained by the United States of America,” said Jon Sobrino, a seventy-eight-year-old Spanish priest, after the mass. Sobrino, who teaches at the UCA, was among the more than twenty Jesuit priests who presided over the memorial service, wearing white robes with red frocks embroidered in traditional Salvadoran style.

“What’s the most important thing for me today?” Sobrino asked. “To remember, and to say that I will not forget because it was real.”

The priests, and a housekeeper and her daughter, were slaughtered by a special unit of the Salvadoran military at their university residence, in retaliation for the priest’s perceived collusion with leftist rebels during the civil war. The priests had been active in brokering peace talks to end the decade-long war between the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front and the right-wing government of President Alfredo Cristiani.

Ben Feibleman

The names of the deceased were featured on the lectern, during memorial mass, with the two innocent women featured at the top.

The assassination was allegedly orchestrated at the highest levels of the Salvadoran military, according to declassified documents cited in an ongoing lawsuit in Spain. The order instructed the unit to leave no witnesses.

Nine soldiers were initially charged in the murders, but one had deserted the military and fled the country before he could be arrested. The verdict was delivered on September 28, 1991, with only two of the defendants—Colonel Guillermo Alfredo Benavides Moreno and Lieutenant Yusshy René Mendoza Vallecillos— found guilty of murder. All of the other defendants, including those who had confessed, were acquitted.

A 1993 amnesty law, pushed through El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly just days after the release of the U.N. Truth Commission report, meant that both Mendoza and Benavides were released after serving about fifteen months of a thirty-year sentence.

This year’s annual commemoration of the priest’s murders, thanks to the Supreme Court decision, came with a renewed hope for justice.

The mass, held on the same campus where the murders took place, was upbeat and featured live music. The sermon was given by Cardinal Gregorio Rosa Chavez, a close friend of Archbishop Blessed Óscar Romero, who was assassinated while offering mass in 1980. Like the slain Jesuit priests before him, Cardinal Chavez called for the congregation to speak out, without fear. Velasco said she identified with the message of the University, and the six murdered priests.

“The huge legacy they left us with is to ask for justice and peace, and that lives on in all of us,” Velasco said.

Bishop John Rawsthorne, who came from England for this year’s commemoration event, his fourth, agrees. “It is just very important that justice is done,” Rawsthorne told The Progressive after the service. “You know, there is no peace without justice. That’s what people forget.”

At the time of the massacre, Montano served as vice minister of defense for public safety, and commanded the National Police, the Treasury Police, and the National Guard. The Spanish lawsuit cites Montano and several other high ranking military officers at the time as the intellectual authors of the hit.

Norman Stockwell, now publisher of The Progressive, elaborated in a 2015 article for the Tico Times:

“[Montano] allegedly met with the late Col. René Emilio Ponce, El Salvador’s Army chief of staff at the time, and other high-ranking officers to plan the attack on the Jesuits, who were seen as supporting El Salvador’s guerrillas. Both Montano and Ponce had also received training at the U.S. Army’s infamous School of the Americas, or SOA (now called Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, or WHINSEC). In fact, nineteen of the twenty-six officers cited in the U.N. Truth Commission report for involvement in the Jesuit murders were graduates of the SOA.”

Montano denies involvement in the massacre.

If extradited, Montano will be the first of the defendants in the Spanish lawsuit to stand trial. El Salvador has denied extradition requests for other military personnel listed in the case, who still live in the country.

Montano was found in Boston in 2011 with falsified travel documents and detained for immigration fraud and perjury in a North Carolina prison.

Montano was found in Boston in 2011 with falsified travel documents and detained for immigration fraud and perjury in a North Carolina prison. The same year, a Spanish judge issued an indictment against Montano and nineteen other former Salvadoran military personnel for their roles in the murders. Extradition proceedings began. Five of the six assassinated priests were Spanish citizens.

“Twenty eight years ago, six good men plus two women were assassinated by Battalion Atlacatl, which was trained by the United States of America,” said Jon Sobrino, a seventy-eight-year-old Spanish priest, after the mass. Sobrino was among the more than twenty Jesuit priests who presided over the memorial service, wearing white robes with red frocks embroidered in traditional Salvadoran style.

The commemorative mass in San Salvador was attended by U.S. diplomat Daniel Thompson and the Spanish Ambassador to El Salvador, Federico de Torres Muro.

“I am here to pay tribute to some compatriots and the people that were with them on that tragic day in 1989, today twenty-eight years ago,” Muro told The Progressive. Though he could not comment extensively on an ongoing court case, or Montano’s pending extradition, Muro said that Spain is committed to a just trial, which he hoped “could offer closure for this tragic day.”

Sarah Blaskey is an independent journalist based in New York. Her current investigations are supported by the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting.